“I don’t want my house to look like a magazine cover, I just want it to look and feel put together.”
I was recently talking with a mom who has 3 young kids at home. She was sharing with me how certain areas of her home feel overwhelming to keep up with. As I was listening to her talk, she rattled off the sentence above, without even thinking twice about it.
I immediately wrote it down, because it was so brilliantly worded.
I think most of us can relate to this statement in our motherhood. We don’t need a perfect, Instagram worthy home every minute of the day. We just want to feel good about our home. Am I right?
Disclaimer: If you do feel like you’re striving for a magazine cover-worthy home, where everything is neat and tidy every moment of the day, you’re probably going to live with a lot of frustrating and disappointing moments. Because these are unrealistic expectations.
But if you simply want your home to look and feel put together to a level that makes YOU feel good, then I can help you get there.
In my Calm Your Chaos course, I teach my 3-part system to make your home work for you. If you want to do a deep dive into this system, get yourself on the waitlist here! I’d love to see you on the inside of this community.
But in this post, I want to scratch the surface and share 6 things you should clean every day to feel good about your home. Because I’m a firm believer that the way you feel about your home, directly affects the way you feel about your life.
So let’s get right to it. Here are 6 things you should clean every day to feel good about your home.
1. WIPE DOWN THE KITCHEN COUNTERS AFTER EVERY MEAL
Doing a quick wipe down only takes about a minute to do, but makes a huge difference overall. It’s amazing how sticky your kitchen counters can get after making a meal. So, instead of sweeping the crumbs into the sink and walking away, just take a minute to wipe your counters down with a washcloth.
I typically give my counters a quick wipe down with a washcloth after breakfast and lunch. After dinner, I use my Branch Basics cleaner to give the counters a good spray.
This is also a great time to wipe down your stovetop if it needs it. Have you ever had to scrub a stovetop before? Yeah, it’s not fun. So stay on top of it! If grease splattered, wipe it down right away, so you don’t have a big mess to scrub, down the road.
2. SWEEP THE FLOORS AFTER LUNCH AND DINNER
Use your judgement with how often you need to sweep your floors. A good rule of thumb is to do a quick sweep after lunch and dinner. But if your floors don’t look too bad after lunch, go ahead and skip the sweep. But you always need to do a thorough sweep or vacuum after dinner. There is a lot of life that has been lived on the kitchen floor all day long!
Pro Tip! This is something that you can and should delegate to your kids. The maintenance of your home should be a team effort. If your kids are young, this is the perfect time to implement these small tasks. They will learn very early on that maintaining the home is a part of the family team.
3. DO ONE LOAD OF LAUNDRY EVERY DAY
I have tried many different laundry systems and the tried and true, one load of laundry a day system is simply the best. Who wants to spend an entire Saturday afternoon folding clothes? Not me. When you get into the habit of doing one load a day, your laundry piles aren’t so huge and you can get it washed, folded, and put away fairly quickly.
If you’re thinking, “Krysten, I know I should do one load of laundry a day, but I forget or the day gets ahead of me and it doesn’t get done.” In this blog post, I go deeper into my laundry system and teach you how to make laundry a daily habit. It will be really helpful to you.
4. CLEAN YOUR DISHES AFTER EVERY MEAL
If you have a dishwasher, use it to your benefit! Do not let the dishes pile up in your sink all day. Instead, put them directly in the dishwasher and save yourself the extra step of putting them in there later.
If you don’t have a dishwasher, try getting into the habit of washing the dishes after every meal. This way, you won’t have 30 minutes’ worth of dishes to clean at the end of the night.
Also, staring at a sink full of dishes all day is causing stress to your brain, even if you don’t realize it. The truth is, your brain does not like unfinished tasks. And every time you go into your kitchen with piles of dishes in your sink, it’s subconsciously adding to your stress levels. This is why it’s important to address the dishes right away. (Again, if your kids are old enough, have them help out with this).
5. MAKE THE BEDS
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how many people don’t make their beds every day. Start getting into the habit of making your bed as soon as you wake up in the morning. You’re going to feel better every time you walk into your bedroom when your bed is made.
I read a book once that talked about how important it is for you to make your bed every day because you start your day by completing a task. So even if you do not complete anything else in your day, you made your bed and accomplished something from start to finish.
6. ADDRESS THE EVERY DAY CLUTTER
We all have clutter that trickles into our homes daily. Yep, I’m talking about that pile of papers that are stacking up on the kitchen counter or the odds and end stuff you just threw in a basket so you wouldn’t have to keep looking at it.
It’s so important to address these little piles of clutter every day because you’ll save yourself a lot of purging down the road. I like to teach my students about the one-touch rule. Instead of saving your mail to sort for another day, commit to going through it right away. Instead of putting things in that junk drawer, put that thing back where it belongs or throw it away if you don’t need it anymore.
Small clutter will become big clutter at some point if you don’t address it on the daily.
Now if you’re feeling overwhelmed because you have a lot of big clutter problems right now, then let’s work on that. You can take the free 15 day declutter challenge here. In this challenge, I teach you why clutter is adding to your stress levels and then I help you work through key spaces in your home.
As we wrap this up, let me say – none of these 6 areas you should clean every day, were probably new to you. But they are things that get skipped more than they should be.
So often, it’s the littlest things that make the biggest difference. It’s not the 6-month deep clean that makes you feel good about your home every day. No, it’s the day to day little habits that you implement that make the biggest difference in how you feel about your home. So make time for the small habits because they matter, a lot.
I’ve created a graphic for you below to remind you of these daily cleaning tasks. Save this image to your Pinterest board or screenshot it to your phone. Do what you need to do, to make these 6 cleaning tasks a reminder to you.
And then tomorrow, start implementing just one. Do it over and over until it becomes a habit. Once you’ve mastered that, add the next one in.
